USS Drum

The Battleship Park in Mobile Alabama includes the WWII submarine USS Drum. It is open for tour with all parts of the boat accessible including the conning tower.

There are a number of these class of WWII submarines on display around the country and we seem to be checking them out one by one. The following links will take you to previous posts about these other submarines.

This link takes you to the USS Razorback in Little Rock - http://traversingthetrails.blogspot.com/2016/05/submarine-on-arkansas-river.html

This link takes you to the USS Silversides in Michigan - http://traversingthetrails.blogspot.com/2015/07/silversides.html

They had some nice large scale submarine models on display

Deck guns were used to sink ships when conditions allowed and save torpedoes

View down from the conning tower

Galley

The Fairbanks Morse diesel engines were the same as used in railroad engines of the time

You can see the stern of the Battleship ALABAMA from the deck of the submarine

Corinth and Shiloh Civil War Battlefields

We stopped to see the museums/interpretive centers at the Civil War Battlefields of Corinth, Mississippi and Shiloh, Tennessee. Like other Civil War battlefields, the death and carnage that took place is hard to fathom, but the explanations of the battles at each were well done.

I was saddened to find that for every soldier who perished from being shot two more died of disease. The reasons for this became clear when it was pointed out the the body wastes of 70,000 soldiers, thousands of horses and the shallow graves of thousands of dead soldiers polluted the shallow ground water they drank in the rather confined area they were forced to occupy...

As you walk up to the Corinth Interpretive Center you pass metal castings embedded in the sidewalk intended to give the impression of walking across a battlefield after the fight.

Explanation of why the railroad crossing here made this a strategic target

The Corinth museum explains the various stages of the start of the Civil War in some detail

Display of how to prepare for a seige

This was interesting

The movie about the events is not to be missed

The Visitor Center at nearby Shiloh National Military Park also has a very well done movie about events

Tours of the Battlefield are explained by color coded markers about the field

Diorama showing the battle

Histories of some select combatants are explained

Just down the road from the Shiloh Visitors Center is a restaurant purported to be one of the 10 best in the country for fried catfish. The food was good and lived up to its reputation.